The Village Runt
by Pagen Godess
Summary: Hiccup being good at something other than making messes was something he hadn't been able to wrap his mind around at first because it went against everything he knew and he'd hated it. But Hiccup was good at something and that something was dragons. Part 4 of the Lonely Youngling Series


The Village Runt

Ever since they were little Hiccup had always been the odd one out. The walking fishbone had been the one they picked on and teased and bullied. It was understandable of course because even his cousin's name made him a target. You called the smallest and weakest of a tribe, or herd, Hiccup and that's what his Uncle Stoick had named his son. It was the runt's name, the weakling's name. It had been that way before Snotlout had been born and it would be long after he was dead and gone. So it was that even years later when all of them were older Hiccup had remained the same; small and skinny and weak. Then things began to change. Change in a way that Snotlout hadn't been able to understand no matter how hard he had tried. Not that anyone had really ever understood Hiccup and more often than not it hadn't been worth trying to understand his scrawny smart mouthed cousin.

More often than not trying to understand his cousin simply made his head hurt. Then one day out of the blue Hiccup who couldn't do anything without screwing it up was good at fighting dragons: big, mean, and scary dragons that would rather eat you on sight than do anything else. Some small part of him was even willing to admit that Hiccup was better than he was at taking down the beasts in training.

Hiccup being good at something other than making messes was something he hadn't been able to wrap his mind around at first because it went against everything he knew and he'd hated it. Hated it with a passion that he'd thought he only possessed for Astrid and her fiery ways and for killing dragons, or the thought of killing dragons. His cousin wasn't supposed to be good at anything and no one other than him seemed to realize it. Well not no one because Astrid seemed mad enough to spit flames whenever she looked at Hiccup but eventually that changed too.

He'd acted all happy when his cousin was around but so had all the others and the last thing he had wanted was to be left out of anything. So in end the end it seemed like he was the only one who truly hated Hiccup's new found skill. Then the thing with the Nightmare and the Night Fury happened and he understood a little. His cousin hadn't been fighting the dragons. Everything Hiccup had done in their dragon training classes had been nothing more than a bunch of tricks!

His cousin was still the same nothing as before and now everyone hated him again. Some part of him had even been happy to see that things were going back to the way they had been before Hiccup had been good at something. And then things had changed again but he found that this was a change that he didn't mind all that much because the moment he'd touched Hookfang's snout he'd known that the Nightmare was his and his alone. Hiccup's success hadn't bothered him so much after that.

Why should it when he was sitting on a dragon's back? How many Vikings would be able to claim that they rode a Monstrous Nightmare into battle? None, because he was the first one to do it and that filled him with the same type of pride that winning their yearly Thawfest games did. Some part of him even acknowledged that he might just be able to stand his cousin if things like dragon riding were the reward he received for not beating the weakling into the ground whenever possible.

All the pride in the world however couldn't prepare him for the fight against the Red Death. He'd never seen a dragon as big as the monster that they were going to fight. Compared to his dragon the Red Death had been a true Monstrous Nightmare. He'd heard stories about big dragons before and he'd heard the stories about how Viking hero's had killed the big dragons.

The Red Death had put the dragons in the stories to shame. No Viking would ever be able to kill such a beast on his own. Oh, he'd been ready to try of course and he'd done what he could. His hammer hadn't been much use for anything other than hitting the monstrous dragon in the eye and even that had only worked for so long. In the end he'd had to rely on Ruffnut and Tuffnut to get him away from the Red Death before he got killed.

After the twin's had carried him away from the Red Death the real battle had begun and even though he'd never admit it out loud Snotlout was more than happy that he wasn't part of it. Watching Hiccup and hid Night Fury fight against the Red Death had been the most terrifying thing he'd ever seen and when it was all over the only thing he'd been able to do had been hope that his cousin had somehow managed to survive.

And he had, hiccup survived his fight with the biggest and most deadly dragon that any of them had ever seen. He'd also lost his leg doing it but it seemed like it be the type of injury that was more than worth it. Besides Gobber was missing both a leg and an arm so Hiccup still had it better than the blacksmith.

Snotlout would admit though that even now moths after the battle it was still a little weird to see all the dragons around the village. The one thing he'll never get used to however is how all the dragon's act around Hiccup. They all crowd around the scrawny little twig like he's some sort of hatching and none of them dare do more than growl and roar at him. Hiccup can walk up to any dragon on the island hold he hand out, turn his head, and seconds later their pressing their noses.

Even Hookfang seems to like his cousin more than he likes his rider. Hookfang's rough with him all the time but when it comes to Hiccup he'd never so much as snapped at him. At first Snotlout had thought it was because of Toothless. What dragon would want to take on an angry Night Fury? But it wasn't. The dragons were calm and docile around his cousin all the time no matter if Toothless was there or not.

It was really kinda creepy if he stopped to think about it for any amount of time. So he didn't tend to think about it and he was quite happy with that. But there were those rare moments when he'd see his cousin sitting in the middle of a group of dragons as calm as the ocean in spring and the creepy feeling would come back again. Watching Hiccup with the dragons was almost like watching a small child be coddled by their parents and that was wrong on so many levels that Snotlout outright refused to acknowledge it.

Dragons were smart sure, every good Viking knew that but they weren't supposed to do things like adopt people. They could be protective sure but they weren't supposed to fawn over things that weren't shiny. Or at least he didn't think they were supposed to. Snotlout wouldn't really know.

He'd never read the books they had about dragons and he didn't intent too. If he really wanted to know something he'd go and ask Fishlegs about it. The fat know-it-all could tell him anything he wanted to know about any dragon he wanted to know about. So for now he was just going to ignore the fact that every single dragon on the island of Berk seemed to be siding with his cousin because if he thought about that too much he wouldn't be able to go anywhere near the scrawny runt. Snotlout would admit to himself that his cousin scared him now.

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Ok, so Snotlout first things first: I hate you. Really I do there's nothing more to Snotlout than there seems to be. He's all brawn and attitude. Not to mention he's a jerk. Or al least that's how I see him. I am also glad that Hiccup made fun of him during the Thawfest episode of Riders of Berk. Now he knows how the others feel.

Ok rant over. Yes I've done another one and there are two more to follow. This one shot and the next two were written upon request for GagaPrim on deviantart. She requested it sometime last year and I've only been able to get to work on the stories now. My next one should be up next moth if all goes well in my world.

Oh and for those of you that are interested I know have an ao3 account. You can find a link to that account on my profile page. My name is the same over there as it is here so I shouldn't be hard to find. I am however going slow on the uploads over there so new stories will appear here first.

Pagen


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